Baroque vs. Modern Art: Manifestos and Artistic Vision

The Baroque Artist's Implicit Creed

The manifesto of the Baroque artist was in the work itself — there was no need to explain it in writing, as the tools of the artist were fully capable of allowing him to present a view that was both pleasing to the artist and/or patron and illuminative for the viewer. The entire Baroque artistic movement was rooted in a spirit of Counter-Reformation that supported a more realistic and visually stunning sense of the wholeness of things, as well as of the "nature" of humanity — neither purely angelic nor brutishly animalistic, but somewhere in between, touched by sin.¹

This sense of fallen human nature would gradually be rejected by the modern world, displaced by a more naturalistic, evolutionary perspective. A new definition of man would be established by modern thinkers, philosophers, writers, and statesmen — whether Marx, Freud, Rand, or Chairman Mao. The modern artist thus comes from a different place than the Baroque artist, who worked under a still somewhat unified, coherent, and accepted vision. The modern artist, on the other hand, was dealing with an environment that was increasingly fractured and fragmented, like T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.² It had no moorings and depended on the artist himself to illuminate the viewer with a creed or perspective that would shed light on the work, rather than the work shedding light on our own nature. Instead of looking outward at the Other, modern art looked inward at Itself, and the artist's manifesto became a necessary and popular way of explaining that Self to the Other.

Why Modern Artists Needed Manifestos

The modern artist's manifesto had other reasons for its origin as well. Tom Wolfe notes that the manifesto movement grew out of the simple fact that modern art was indefensible without it. Others have contended that modern art was also supported by the agents of the Marshall Plan, whose bottomless purse went to funding projects and movements meant to undermine Soviet order — in this sense, modern art represented a liberalizing force and an aesthetic attack on conservative Old World Asiatic and European values.³

Wolfe observes that in 1974, The New York Times ran an article by the paper's dean of the arts, Hilton Kramer, who noted that despite a recent exhibition at Yale of realist painters, the exhibit "lacked a persuasive theory" and therefore "lacked something crucial."⁴ For Wolfe, this was the moment he realized that modern art and modern art critics were dependent upon "the manifesto," and that without it, art had no meaning. Modern art, in other words, had "become completely literary: the paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text."⁵

The Counter-Reformation and Baroque Unity

Three hundred years earlier, this would not have been the case. Baroque artists did not lack a manifesto so much as they might have lacked patronage or talent.⁶ Cuius regio, eius religio — Whose realm, his religion. In Europe, Christianity was still the main tenet of the realm, though the Protestant Reformation had unleashed a tidal wave of "new thought" regarding how Christianity was to be interpreted and applied. The word "baroque" means "imperfect pearl" and was applied by later critics who endeavored to criticize the artistic era for its elaborate, excessively detailed, or highly dramatic compositions.⁷ It was precisely for these reasons that the Church supported the Baroque painters — they contrasted with the "rationalism" and "idealism" of the Renaissance that had contributed to the undermining of the Catholic culture that had dominated Europe for centuries.⁸

The primary reason that Baroque artists did not write manifestos was that there was no need for them. All were in agreement, more or less, about the nature of the soul and the Christian narrative that explained the state of the world. Titian, the forefather of the Baroque era, was a favorite of Charles V, one of the last Roman Catholic Emperors to fight the Reformation (and the Moors) in order to maintain a Catholic realm.⁹ Both Titian and Charles V embraced the Catholic faith — like so many of the most celebrated Baroque artists, whose patrons were often concerned with propagating a Catholic worldview in art. This point is especially important, as the Reformers — Puritans, Calvinists, and others — were less enamored of the arts, which had fostered and propagated the Catholic religion. Caravaggio, Velázquez, Rubens, and Honthorst each appreciated the unique perspective that the Catholic worldview offered. What they did in their art was to emphasize the essence of human nature, of royalty, of beauty, of nature, and of faith. The "manifesto" that explained these essences was not to be found in any texts the artists themselves produced, because it was already found in the texts produced by the Church — namely, in the decrees of the Council of Trent, the Counter-Reformation council which laid out the fundamental creed explaining why the "imperfect pearl" (that is, the human soul) was imperfect and in need of salvation.¹⁰

In the Protestant Netherlands, the subject of Dutch Baroque art was less religious — the Protestants frowned on religious art — and artists used their talents to reflect the everyday world around them. Thus, Rembrandt painted the Dutch people with whom he came into contact, and by the time Vermeer was painting, the movement had essentially evolved into realism.¹¹ The arc of artistic representation was already turning: from God and mythology in the Renaissance to nature and reality in the Baroque, to the everyday persons and places of the Realist school, to the Impressionists who sought to vitalize the real world with an illuminative spirit (as in the works of Van Gogh), and finally to the abstract expressionists, who — in a world increasingly fragmented and fractured by war and inharmonious philosophies — broke with the past and created art that was completely conceptual and unexplainable without a "manifesto." Each modern artist supplied his own meaning (for lack of a universal one, as was available in the age of Christendom), and each had to write his own text or explanation — which essentially became the "school," whether Dada, Futurist, Cubist, or otherwise. This is why manifestos sparked modern art movements: as Wolfe states, the manifestos came first, the art second. The art illuminated the manifesto.

Caravaggio and the Baroque Technique

The style of Caravaggio was based partly on his ability to paint quickly using real-life models recruited from the local streets. Rather than painting in an idealized manner to create an effect of beauty and harmony, Caravaggio approached his subjects with a realistic eye for detail. His vigorous method of realistic painting, combined with a keen sense for dramatic effect, is what helped make the Baroque era so lifelike and animated.¹³ The emphasis was not so much on perfection of form as on the accurate representation of mood, subject, theme, and reality. The deep and penetrating questions of the time — whether religious, political, or social — were felt in the Baroque style, and Caravaggio's technique helped lay the foundation for subsequent Baroque artists. His method was spontaneous yet thoughtful, and like Rembrandt and Velázquez, who were influenced by him, it served a greater thematic purpose: to draw attention to a particular feature or action within the painting through the play of light and shadow. This use of contrast carries significant spiritual meaning, especially given the time and place in which the technique was executed.

Caravaggio's naturalist aim was a departure from the popular Mannerist method of the High Renaissance that preceded it, which makes him an apt pioneer of the new Baroque manner. He did for art what Bach did for music in terms of point and counterpoint, or what Bernini did for sculpture.¹⁴ Unlike the Futurists, who defined themselves by breaking with the past and calling for revolution in thinking and doing, the Baroque artists expanded the artistic parameters of the Renaissance and created a more theatrical style that was more immediate and direct for the viewer, even when subtle. The viewer was drawn into the painting by the way that characters within it gazed outward, eliminating the space between the canvas and the audience. Herman Bauer notes that Rembrandt "has an illusionistic effect" as though the viewer were present within the scene Rembrandt paints.¹⁵ This effect is particularly evident in Rembrandt's Syndics of the Drapers' Guild (1662), a collective portrait commissioned by the Guild. The work catches the inspectors in the middle of their task, each of them suddenly looking up at someone or something just past the viewer, almost causing the viewer to want to look over his shoulder. It is an example of the Rembrandt style in which the characters in the work become the audience and the audience becomes the subject of the characters' interest. Rembrandt puts the viewer at the center of the work by turning the eyes of the officials toward him, thus eliminating the barrier between "real space" and "pictorial space."¹⁶